Rainbows and Firestorms
by ice-crisis
Summary: When Axel goes to Demyx's room to complain about a watery problem he's discovered, things don't turn out quite the way either of them expected. Namely, they find out what you really get when you mix fire and water. Axel/Demyx, Oneshot, T for language.


**Another Kingdom Hearts oneshot! Thanks to everyone who reviewed my last one, reviews make my day. :)**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts or any characters therein. If I did, this wouldn't be fanfiction.**

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**Rainbows and Firestorms**

Interesting fact: in the great castle that looms so threateningly over the neon-lit streets of Dark City in the World That Never Was, the floors and ceilings are not watertight.

Axel was willing to bet that he was one of the only people who knew that, too.

The unpredictable redhead stalked the halls of the castle with murder, or at least painful dismemberment with a subsequent BBQ, on his mind.

When they had told him that the next member of Organization XIII was going to be living in the room right above his, his first reaction was to wonder why the hell, in a castle that had maybe a thousand rooms, _anybody_ had to live in the room above him. It hadn't been as bad as he thought it would be, though, really. Axel had discovered very quickly that the Melodious Nocturne was aptly named, and if he had to be honest it was actually nice to fall asleep to the haunting chords of sitar music that floated down through his ceiling.

Demyx wasn't a particularly bad overhead neighbor—a good thing, since if he had been Axel didn't really know what he could have done about it. Oh, it wouldn't have been _too_ hard to plot some sort of revenge, but the tough part would be getting the point to stick. Demyx could be, well, dense as a post sometimes, so subtlety was out. Overt threatening wasn't that likely to help, either.

Ironically, Demyx was pretty much the only member of the Organization who wasn't even the slightest bit scared of Axel's power.

Well, okay, it would be exaggerating to say that the others were _scared_ of him, but Axel had always thought that they were at least smart enough to know Survival Instinct when it hit them over the head with a two-by-four with the word RUN inscribed on it in large, capitol letters. He wasn't sure if Demyx was just that stupid or just that new, uninformed and cocky, to have missed the lesson.

If he had a heart, Axel might have been annoyed with the fact that it was _Demyx_ of all people. Demyx was a pushover. Demyx was a crybaby and a coward and… and his element was water.

And water beat fire. Every. Single. Time.

Not that Axel had ever actually fought against Demyx before. He was pretty sure he could flatten the guy in seconds if he ever had to; all he had to do was rely on his weapon rather than his element. There was no way Demyx's pansy sitar and a couple of waves could stand up to the awesome power of his chakrams of doom.

Of course, since Demyx was such a good neighbor, Axel had never felt the need to test this theory.

At least, not until the first time he'd come home to discover that his room was flooded.

Axel shoved open the door marked 'IX' without even knocking.

"Hey, Demyx—" he started, then stopped, blinked, and stared.

Demyx was balancing on the top of a ladder, holding something that looked like a weird cross between a crystal chandelier and a disco ball and trying, rather unsuccessfully it looked, to hook it onto the light fixture. He glanced up.

"Hey, Axel!" he said cheerfully, and for a second it looked like the dumb bastard was going to try to _wave_ at him. Fortunately, he kept one hand on the ladder, keeping himself steady, and the other grasped around the hook on the… thing.

"What the hell is that?" Axel asked, temporarily forgetting why he was there in the first place.

"This? Just something I found lying around." Demyx tried again to hang it from the light on his vaulted ceiling, just barely out of reach, and once again missed. "Xigbar said it was from the Superior's interior decorating phase, but I think he might have been pulling my leg."

Axel snorted. Well, duh. Anybody who listened to something like that from Xigbar was missing more than just their heart. Unfortunately, he didn't think there was a place called Kingdom Brains.

"So," said Demyx, stepping higher up the ladder onto the part labeled 'do not stand here', "what're you doing all the way up here?"

Oh, right.

Axel folded his arms and leaned against the doorframe.

"Actually," he said, watching as Demyx finally managed to hook the strange thing onto the light… "I came to ask if you happened to know anything about the giant fucking puddle in the middle of my floor," …and suddenly lost his balance, toppling off the ladder and landing hard on his rear.

Axel couldn't help snickering when he noticed that Demyx had actually _squeaked_ when he landed.

Heh. Cute.

…wait.

_What?_

Axel frowned and shook his head in a rather lame attempt to dislodge the completely out-of-the-blue thought. Demyx wasn't cute, he told himself. Demyx was annoying and, as his sopping room could testify, he was a _pain in the ass_.

He was also looking at him with wide eyes while babbling something about practicing, getting carried away, and I'm sorry Axel, I forgot….

Demyx might not have been scared of Axel's potential for fireworks in particular, but he still hated getting in trouble.

"Whatever," Axel interrupted, ever the forgiving one. "Just get down there and _do_ something about it before I boil your waterbed." He might anyway, just for the hell of it. "And make sure it _never happens again_, got it memorized?"

Demyx nodded, getting back to his feet.

"Will do," he said, looking far too chipper for someone who was about to have his hair set on fire, and suddenly he smiled. "Actually, this is perfect!"

"What?"

"Well, you know what they say," he responded. "When life gives you lemons…"

"Fry 'em?"

Demyx blinked.

"Um," he said. He frowned. "I'm pretty sure that's not how that saying ends."

Axel shrugged. That was okay. Fried lemons probably wouldn't taste very good anyway.

"No, it's: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!" said the blond, and he disappeared in a puff of swirling darkness and smoke.

Axel rolled his eyes. _Lemonade. Figures_, he thought, following.

_Splish_.

Demyx was already there, standing in the middle of the puddle which had, if anything, gotten bigger in the intervening time. He had already summoned his sitar, and was standing there with an aura of concentration that would seem out of place to anyone who had never watched him play before. He looked as though he were taking in the situation before raising a hand and—

_Oh no…_

"_Dance, water, dance!_"

Great. Now Axel was never going to be able to scorch the lame off the walls. Nobody had ever really had the heart—hah!—to tell Demyx that his battle-cry was the corniest thing this side of Atlantica, and as a result Demyx never really seemed to realize how ridiculous he sounded.

Well, at least he was getting rid of the water.

Axel watched as streams of water leapt into the air like playful puppies who had just found a new friend and swirled around the Melodious Nocturne in something that… well, it _did_ actually look a little like a dance, come to think. Demyx, who had banished his sitar again after striking only one chord, stood in the middle with his arms outstretched for a moment, then brought them together again in a twisting motion that the water followed with exact precision. The streams merged between his fingers, forming a rotating, twisting globe that spun in his hands.

Watching, Axel couldn't help but notice that the control and ease with which the Nobody had done this was almost… beautiful.

And, more importantly, it left Axel's room bone dry, just the way he liked it.

Demyx turned.

"Come watch!" he said, still holding the ball of water as he vanished again into the darkness before Axel could ask him what the hell he was talking about.

Axel didn't really have anything better to do, so again he followed.

Demyx was back in his room. He had kicked the ladder out of the way, and Axel stepped out of the darkness just in time to see Demyx toss the still spinning ball of water into the air, splaying his fingers to hold it in place.

"Demyx, what—" he started, but then Demyx moved his hands again, and the whole world exploded.

—_the hell?_

Axel couldn't help but stare, watching as the light around him shifted and danced, morphing in and out of brilliant colors and moving patterns.

It wasn't too hard to figure out what was going on, really. The light was refracting off the crystal thing that the Nobody had hung from it, then again through the water that he held spinning in a loose circle around the contraption, throwing rainbows and water patterns onto the walls of the room. It was a simple trick of prisms.

The result, however, was stunning. Demyx had turned his room into a kaleidoscope.

"It worked!" laughed the Melodious Nocturne, turning in a slow circle—although it was hard to tell if this was to keep the water moving or because he was admiring the effect. He grinned. "Thanks, Axel!"

"For what?"

"For reminding me about the puddle," he said. Then he dropped his hands and the water molecules overhead burst into rainbow-tinted mist. He gestured in the vague direction of the light. "It's always a lot easier to work with water that already exists than it is to take it out of thin air."

Huh. Not that Axel would have known that, since he pretty much always had to create his element from nothing.

"Cool, huh?"

Axel looked at the dispersing mist.

"It was…" he wasn't going to say pretty, damn it,"… weird."

Oh, great save.

Demyx frowned.

"Weird?" he repeated. "What do you mean?"

"I don't know," Axel shrugged. What the hell had he meant? "Seems like kind of a random waste of time."

Now Demyx actually looked a little annoyed.

"What else is there to do?" he challenged.

Good point.

"Work?" suggested Axel. It was kind of disgusting that _that_ was the first thing that came to mind. "Practicing?" he tried again.

Demyx shook his head.

"The Superior hasn't given me any work," he retorted. "And in case you didn't notice, I was practicing all morning."

Oh, right. The puddle. Well, Axel had to admit that Demyx's control over his element _was_ pretty impressive.

"What's wrong with wanting to do something fun for a change?"

Actually, Demyx had a point.

Suddenly, Axel grinned. Demyx had a _very_ good point, and Axel had just come up with something much more fun than making a rainbow slideshow. He'd been thinking earlier that he wanted to test his theory, right? Well, no time like the present!

"You're absolutely right, Demyx," he said, flexing his fingers and forming fire in his hands. "And if you want to do something fun, I just had a _great_ idea. How about a match?"

Demyx took a step back.

"Uh, Axel, I don't really think fighting is _fun_," he said, and Axel could actually hear the hint of panic, or the memory of panic, or whatever it was, sneaking into his voice.

"Aw, come on," he said, with mock innocence, "don't you want to put all that practicing to good use? You're not scared of playing with fire, are you?"

That got him. Demyx glared at Axel.

"I-I'm not scared!" he said, but he didn't sound all that convinced. The funny thing was that it was probably true. Demyx wasn't scared of fire. After all, what do you get when you mix fire and water? A pile of soggy ashes, that's what.

But right now he just might have been scared of Axel.

"Prove it," Axel grinned, tossing a fireball at him.

Demyx gasped and brought his hands down in a fast sweep, causing the mist overhead to coalesce once again into a waterfall that easily extinguished Axel's attack. In the meantime, however, Axel had summoned his weapons.

The fight wasn't exactly spectacular. Demyx, realizing that Axel wasn't going to let it drop and preferring to remain unburned, summoned his sitar just as Axel executed another expert throw, this time with the chakram. Demyx ducked, knowing that trying to block the lethal spiked wheels with his sitar would simply land him with a broken instrument. The spikes sliced through empty air, missing the musician but cutting deeply into the mattress on his bed right behind him.

The waterbed practically exploded.

Demyx, now completely drenched, gaped at the damage for only a moment before turning back to his redheaded opponent with a scowl and bringing his hands down on the strings of his weapon, producing a chord that could only be described as savage.

A blast of water with enough force to break bones burst from an invisible line on the floor, speeding towards Axel like the blade of a well-thrown knife. The redhead dove out of the way, landing on the floor and rolling through the small lake that was already forming as he heard another chord sound.

The second blast of water grazed him, but only just.

Axel stood, shaking the water off himself and thinking unusually charitable thoughts about Xemnas' weird uniform and the insistence that they wear their raincoats _all the time_. He found himself near Demyx's mangled waterbed. With a cruel smirk, he unsheathed his weapons from where they had stuck in the fabric and, twirling them, launched himself back into the battle.

This _was_ fun.

When Axel was really engaged in a fight, he had a tendency to lose himself and fight purely on instinct. It was one of the only times in his life-but-not-really that he could move, and breathe, and _live_ without acknowledging that gnawing emptiness inside him that ached to be filled and threatened to consume him. In the heat of the moment, the viciousness of the fight, Axel was no longer a heartless creature that was never meant to exist; he was fire and fury, molten power and grace that could take your breath away with the same brutal voracity of a firestorm sucking the oxygen from your lungs. It was one reason his reputation was so fierce. It was the reason he was always willing to take a risk.

When Axel really fought, he could fool himself into believing he was _real_ again.

Demyx tried again to hit him, this time with a geyser of water that welled up from below him, but Axel was too fast, moving out of the way and catching the blond off guard with another fireball. Demyx barely managed to block it with a hasty chord that produced a curtain of water around him. Unfortunately, while it saved him for the moment it also blinded him to what lurked outside his ring of water.

When the curtain fell, Axel threw one of his weapons again, and this time it was wreathed in fire. As Demyx dodged the burning disc, Axel took advantage of his distraction, throwing himself bodily at the shorter Nobody. The two crashed to the floor in a moment of dizzying disorientation, Axel pinning the smaller body beneath him with his full weight.

And then the redhead did something that wouldn't even have_ occurred_ to him, had he actually been thinking.

He leaned forward, and kissed Demyx full on the lips.

He heard the muffled, startled sound that the other Nobody made, but he ignored it. Now that he had done it, he wasn't sure why he'd never thought of it before. Demyx's lips were soft against his, smooth and cool just like his element. It was almost soothing.

Nobodies have no hearts. They have no feelings, no emotions, and can only use their memories as a guide for their behavior. Axel didn't love Demyx. Hell, the idea was absurd—he barely even knew him, after all, so even if he hadn't been completely incapable of such a girly sentiment it was stupid to think that he'd have fallen so fast.

No, Axel didn't love Demyx. He _couldn't_ love him.

But he knew what his body was telling him. He knew what the feel of those cool lips against his, of the presence beneath him, of the hand fisting in the collar of his coat, was doing to him. He knew he was responding in a way that the more logical parts of him couldn't even begin to comprehend.

And he liked it.

There was more than one way to feel, after all.

When the kiss broke they were both panting, just slightly. Axel found himself looking into glazed, confused eyes the color of a tropical lagoon, and he wondered, for a split second, what would come next.

Then Demyx narrowed his eyes.

"Hey," he said, "that's cheating!"

Axel smirked.

"It is not," he said, suddenly in a much better mood than he had been only minutes ago. "I already won the fight," he added, leaning in closer. "The victor can do what he likes with the spoils, right?"

Demyx stared at him for a moment in confusion, and then… _blushed_.

Axel grinned. He was definitely going to have to try this again.

As funny as it was to have Demyx spluttering at him, Axel figured that probably he had confused him enough for one day. Releasing him and standing, Axel made his way towards the door, pausing only when Demyx finally found his voice again.

"A-Axel, wait! I… y-you—"

"No, no," Axel said, turning and waving him off with a smirk. "No need to say it. I know I'm hot."

Grinning, he waltzed out the door, leaving Demyx still sitting dumbfounded on his soaking floor.

It occurred to Axel, as he wandered back to his own room, that when you mixed fire and water in the correct proportions what you really got was _steam_.

It did not occur to him until he reached his destination that an epic battle such as the one they had just fought in Demyx's room might have left his own room in exactly the same state it was in before he'd gone to visit Number IX in the first place: a lake.

Well, that was okay, too, he mused, turning on his heel and heading back the way he'd come.

He could always spend the night with Demyx instead.

-End-

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**Author's Note: This one was written as a gift for my awesome friend Placidmage, who has _finally_ gotten around to finishing the next chapter of her story "Back to Square One". Everyone should read it, it's really funny! Anyway, she gave me something of a difficult prompt, so I hope it turned out okay. **

**Please review! :D**


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